MACH2 Simulations of Exothermic Propellants in a Micro-laser Ablation Plasma Thruster (original) (raw)

"An interest in the development of subkilogram forms of satellite micropropulsion has led to the design of the micro-laser plasma thruster (μLPT). Previous work succeeded in constructing a working computational model of the micro-thruster’s operation in the magnetohydrodynamic code MACH2; however, the previous work was limited to simulating only the non-energetic solid propellant ablation mode of the thruster. Recent experiments have shown that the use of an exothermic propellant might be more beneficial for higher-thrust modes of operation. This work reviews improvements made to the computational model to simulate both the sub-detonation experimental ablation and laser-supported detonation of the glycidyl azide polymer fuel used in experiments. Simulation results indiciate that the sub-detonation ablation of this fuel demonstrates an improvement in the coupling coefficient of 70% and in the specific impulse of 20% over the non-energetic solid-propellant case. The laser-supported detonation shows an increase in the coupling coefficient and specific impulse over the baseline solid-propellant case by at least two orders of magnitude. The laser-supported detonation simulation also indicates vast damage to the fuel tape, but the possibility of implementing rigid-wall boundary conditions to the fuel tape is presented. "